Oh for the days of old backyards

GONE are the environmental crimes but also the socialising and the naivety of simple suburban lives.

salt illo

I AM a big fan of the backyard. Not the modern backyard with its patio and barbecue area, its manicured lawns and its mandatory teak outdoor setting for eight.

Oh, and not forgetting the chimera, the brazier, the wood-fired pizza oven, the floodlit Mongolian pear tree and, depending on the age of the household, the designer cubby house complete with heart-engraved shutters and adjacent yellow wave-slide.

Nor does my concept of the perfect backyard have drip systems and timers and lawn edging or indeed a water feature based around a spherical stone sculpture.

No, my perfect backyard is the backyard of my youth where cricket and footy were played in between the veggie patch, the chook house and the compost heap. Not that we knew that it was called a compost heap; we thought it was a rubbish pile.

Who knew that all that time the rubbish pile was living a double life: plain old rubbish pile to us but to others it was an exotic and just-a-bit-French compost heap?

The backyard was the place where the trailer was parked and where the incinerator was kept.

Dear Generation Y, let me explain: an incinerator is a device that lived up the back of the block where the household would -- how can I put this -- burn paper and cardboard waste.

Yes, burn it.

No, we didn't recycle. We burned recyclables because it was easy.

Just settle down, Generation Y, and accept that this was another era. Steady. Steady. Look, if you don't calm down, I'll tell you what we did with autumn leaves in the street.

Right, you asked for it. We burned them, Generation Y. We burned them. And what's more we loved the smell. Yes we did.

And do you know that while we were burning recyclable waste in the incinerator and autumn leaves in the street -- yes, on the asphalt -- we chatted with our neighbours.

We regarded this as quite a social thing to do: neighbours would burn their leaves and we would burn our leaves and we'd chat amid the smoke. Oh the shame.

Perhaps this column is a cathartic, confessional, exercise: and yea, verily only the truth shall set ye free, Bernard. But this is not the extent of it; there's something else I feel I need to say, Generation Y.

We used to water the lawn with a hose and a sprinkler. And this wanton sprinkling contraption -- this fiendish device of brutal environmental torture -- was set to run without a timer. Some people left their hose running all day, to the extent that surplus water would flood down the street.

And do you know what we neighbours would think when we saw water spill out of a garden, Generation Y? Nothin'. Other than, "someone's left their hose on".

I must say that I never did go this far, but there were some people who watered their driveways. Yes, with mains water. To clean the concrete of course, Generation Y.

You just don't get it, do you, Generation Y? Concrete driveways could get really dirty. And the only way they could be cleaned was by watering the concrete.

Again, it was a social thing to do and especially on a hot summer's evening. Water vaporised on the hot concrete and it smelt all clean and steamy. Not that I was involved in this driveway watering, but I liked to watch.

And that's what I miss about the new suburbia.

Gone are the environmental crimes but also gone is the socialising and the naivety of simple suburban lives.

Bernard Salt is a KPMG Partner

Linkedin.com/bernardsalt; Facebook.com/BernardSaltDemographer

twitter.com/bernardsalt; [e-mail]